Every journey starts with a single step.
My journey started "officially" in March 2006. I started this blog six years into my journey, I often find myself amazed at how this disease taught me a lot....about me. I find the hot air balloons a perfect representation of my journey, with all it's ups and downs....I still soar.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Another challenge

Been a tough few days with the muscle spasticity. All my "usual" symptoms seem worse lately and the muscle spasticity is not different. Thankfully, the muscle spasticity isn't a symptom I have frequently. Usually. Last nights episodes lasted longer than usual and well into mid morning today. During and following the muscle spasticity I had a new symptom. One I had never experienced before. Hopefully, an isolated incident. It's now gone away, although it took about 4 hours for it to resolve. Following a series of particularly bad spasms that primarily effected my left foot, my left foot from the knee down went completely numb. When it actually happened, I wasn't complaining. It was after I uttered a particularly fervent pray to God to "PLEASE STOP THE PAIN". That the leg went numb. The pain simply went away. At first I just thought the spasm had suddenly stopped. Until I looked at my foot. The tendons on the foot were still pronounced, my big toe was still drawn to the right and my other toes were still spread and drawing towards the left. Clearly the muscles were still spasming quite intensely. However, I felt NOTHING. I asked Mark to rub my foot. He did, and while I felt him touching the skin I couldn't feel anything below the skin. My foot was numb! I asked Mark to rub HARD. (Normally during a spasm I can't stand ANY pressure (massaging or rubbing) on the muscle. It makes the pain even worse. Mark said he could feel the muscle balled up tight. He started doing deep massage to see if he could get it to ease up. I didn't feel a thing. We then realized the numbness extended all the way up my leg to the knee. A mixed blessing. Frankly, I was so relieved the pain had stopped that at that point I didn't care that my leg went numb. It wasn't until I tried to walk on the leg and realized I couldn't that I got more than just a bit apprehensive. No way was I going to panic. I figured I'd just rest and see what happened. It took about an hour before I could walk on the leg (relying totally on the cane). Now, 7 hours later all the feeling is back and the walking is better. Wouldn't dream of attempting to walk without the cane though. To be honest, while the "symptom" is a bit disconcerting, I'm not freaked out about it. It had never happened before. I was actually RELIEVED it happened as the pain stopped, and heck I PRAYED for the pain to stop. Time will tell whether this was a one time answer to an immediate prayer, or this is a new symptom and an indicator of progression. I see the Neurologist a week from Tuesday so I'm sure he will have some answers for me. Time goes on and the journey continues.